Lessons from a Brush Fire

Here’s a lesson two boys out in Starhill, the rural community where my folks live, learned today: be careful driving that fancy new go-kart you got for Christmas. If you try stunt-driving it around a field of tall grass, it might flip over, and oil may leak out of the hot engine and set the grass on fire. This may cause your go-kart to burn to a crisp, and could even cause a big fire that could burn down houses.

Thank goodness no houses were burned today, and volunteer firefighters were able to contain and extinguish the fire before it got out of hand. But it was a close thing. I was on my dad’s back porch this afternoon talking to him when I smelled smoke in the air. We didn’t think much of it, until a few minutes later, when a Starhill fire truck driven by Ronnie Morgan and Brutus The Fire Dog came barreling up the road, and stopped at the end of my dad’s driveway.

Turns out that the fire was in a field that was inaccessible by road. Before long, there were four fire trucks parked in our driveway, and a bunch of volunteer firemen trying to figure out how to get to the fire, which was about half a mile away. There were a couple of mudholes that would have to be driven through to reach the burning field, and there was no way those heavy trucks could make it without getting bogged down. Meanwhile, the light wind was spreading the fire.

I drove a neighbor’s son home, and figured I would head on into town and do the errands I needed to do. This is a job for trained firemen, I thought, and I’m not a trained fireman.

Then I thought: What the hell is wrong with me? There is a grass fire that could burn down houses in Starhill, and the men aren’t sure how to fight it. They might need my help, however poor that might be.

I turned the car around, drove back, parked next to the fire trucks, and headed out across the field with my son Lucas to see what we could do. By the time we got near the fire, we saw men filling buckets with water from a pond, then ferrying them to the fire on four-wheeler racks. We helped with that for one round, but by then, the fire was nearly out. It had burned a couple of acres, I’d say, but the firefighters — all volunteers, note well — had stopped it before it got out of control.

It’s awesome to think about how those men came running, and overcoming a huge obstacle — namely, the inability to get the trucks within a half-mile of the fire — still extinguished the thing before it threatened houses.

I learned a little something about myself too. It was interesting to see how quickly I defaulted to the stance of that’s somebody else’s job. Putting out the fire, that is. Mind you, if this had been a house fire, there’s no way someone like me, who hadn’t been trained (as these volunteers have been), would go barreling up in there with a hose. But on this grass fire, there was something I could do, and Lucas and I were willing to do it. I thought later about how living in a place like this doesn’t give you the ability to see things like that grass fire, and to outsource taking care of it to other people. I mean, you can do that if you like, but you would hate yourself if you did. Or you ought to, if you are able-bodied, with the ability to do something to help, no matter how trivial.

Strange how we compartmentalize charitable works. We tell ourselves that we don’t have to do X, because there’s a government agency, or some other official, or semi-official, institution whose job it is to handle these things. And yet, there is still need for direct, personal involvement. Maybe the need is not just among those who are suffering or in danger, but also within ourselves — to not simply be a passive spectator, but an active participant.

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12 Responses to Lessons from a Brush Fire

At the same time, it’s not crazy to think that any fire — including a grass fire — should be handled by the “pros” (by which I mean, trained firefighters, paid or no). Any fire can get out of control quickly. There’s a reason we have trained firefighters, and not just a bunch of well-meaning guys.

[Note from Rod: Yes, and I wouldn't have put myself or my son in danger trying to be helpful. But we weren't in danger helping those guys fill buckets. -- RD]

Strange how we compartmentalize charitable works. We tell ourselves that we don’t have to do X, because there’s a government agency, or some other official, or semi-official, institution whose job it is to handle these things.

Or just an assumption that “someone else” will do it. My Quaker Meeting is small, and I’m continually amazed by how people step up to help each other time after time, unfailingly. I’ve been both a helper and a recipient. I think the fact that we *are* small has something to do with it. If we don’t each pitch in at least 40-50% the time, then there won’t be enough “pitcher-inners” to meet the need. Someone posted a comment about this to our Meeting Facebook page recently. This person has a friend who is “very active” in one of the local mega-churches with well over a thousand members. She underwent surgery and let the appropriate church committee know that she would be in need of some meals brought to her during her recovery. Someone set up a computer-based care calender for her and advertized it to the church community. Only one person signed up to bring a meal. She is probably well-liked by many at her church, but with that many people, everyone probably thought someone else would do it.

My mom and dad attend a medium size city church that was much smaller when they first started attending. My mom commented that a lot of the nice things they used to do for each other have fallen off as the church grew. The ladies of the church used to make quilts for young people getting married, for example. (They even made one for me, regardless of the fact that I stopped attending regularly when I was in college!) But as weddings came more and more frequently it got onerous. Same with meals after babies were born — it was eventually the same 4 or 5 women making the meals for more and more families having babies. They tried to grow the pool of meal-makers, but got few takers, so they stopped offering the meals unless it had been a complicated birth. Etc, etc. Kind of sad, really.

You know you live in the sticks when someone not only thinks of using ATV’s to fight a fire, they can actually round them up quickly and get them there. If this had happened in a more populated area, I don’t think they’d have gotten to it in time.

“Mind you, if this had been a house fire, there’s no way someone like me, who hadn’t been trained (as these volunteers have been), would go barreling up in there with a hose. But on this grass fire, there was something I could do, and Lucas and I were willing to do it.”

When I was thirteen or so, the aerial antenna on our house was struck by lightning. This immediately started a rapidly expanding fire in our den which had recently been repurposed as a bedroom for my grandmother who had been discharged from the hospital after a major heart attack. The room was full of medical equipment and linens since it had no closet.

The lightning strike destroyed our electrical system, including all the telephones, so as my mother was getting my grandparents and the dog out the backdoor and into the cars, I ran out the front headed to the neighbor’s house to call the fire department.

Our neighbor was a young high school teacher who had just moved to the street. After showing me to the phone in his kitchen, he immediately ran back to our house, extinguisher in hand to do what he could. The small kitchen canister wasn’t up to the task, and the high windows of our off-grade house made using it on the fire almost impossible.

Luckily for us, he noticed that our garden hose was coiled up under the den window. He broke the window and immediately began showering as much water as he could into the burning room. The firefighters arrived minutes later and stopped the blaze before it could claim the house. Afterwards, they told us that our neighbor’s quick thinking and action almost certainly saved the structure.

Pecan paneling, thick curtains and all that medical equipment made that room the worst place in the house a fire could have started. Had our neighbor not temporarily knocked back the fire off the curtains and paneling, the blaze would have run up the walls, breached the ceiling and entered the attic, spreading to the rest of the structure. In a house fire, every minute counts. If not for that untrained, unprepared, but highly resourceful neighbor, we would have lost our home.

All that having been said, never ever enter or reenter a burning structure unless you know what you are doing! Our neighbor’s heroics were performed from the relative safety of outside the burning house.

You’ve been living in cities for a while. Your initial response is not only acceptable but preffered in a city (where it would have been a structure fire) where the firefighters would just as soon not have you underfoot.

I think there’s also something about more contemplative, intellectual types that influences the way we respond to those sorts of problems. Often for me when I’m thinking about a problem, I’m so focused on the theoretical points that it doesn’t even occur to me to do something about it… why would I do something practical to address the problem at hand when I can think in the big picture about the theory and systematic points that could prevent the problem from arising or alter the shape of it when it does arise? I’m trying to get better about that, learning practical skills and thinking more practically, but it’s just such a foreign thing to the way I naturally work.

[Note from Rod: Yes. This. Exactly. I write about it in "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming," how unlike my sister, I can't just eat the ice cream, I have to have a Theory, and then I have to process the experience by analyzing it. I hate being that abstract, but that's how I roll naturally. -- RD]

My father was a USAF JAG at SAC in the ’80s. Part of the job was to write and practice responses to various nuclear war scenarios with other servicemember. He spent a lot of time in the field.

I asked him as a teenager what the common thread was in successful responses, expecting to hear something about particular survival tools or skills.

He told me that in every scenario, success depended on the ability of survivors and communities to have mutual trust and aid. Everything else was a distant second.

I had that in mind when I met and married my husband, who grew up in the same area where his grandparents broke ground. Growing up country had given him years of valuable training in survival.

The most visible of these abilities was the years of training in hunting and fishing. The invisible part is the interdependent community underlying these abilities. Proficiency with firearms isn’t a sign of dangerous antisocial behavior; instead it’s practically a community service. My freezer (and my kids’ bellies) is full of local venison thanks to the skills and generosity of in-laws.

I grew up in suburban sprawl, and after I got over the initial shock of living here (“where are the buildings? will I ever have sushi again?!?”) I grew to love a place where people like to stop and chat, pull over if you look like you’re having a problem, and would rush over to help put out a fire in your field. It often reminds me of that ideal of hospitality in a strange land that Father Abraham practiced.